Firm amidst volatility

The market was back on track after displaying subdued trend for the last couple of sessions. The market remained firm, above 15,600 levels, for almost the entire trading session. The 30-stock Sensex began the day 61 points above its previous close at 13,631 and moved up to touch an intra-day high of 15,841 on substantial buying support in heavyweight, metal and oil & gas stocks. The index also received major support from banking, power and capital goods stocks, each of which gained around 1% today. The Sensex finally wrapped up the session with a gain of 122 points at 13,692, while the Nifty closed with a gain of 34 points at 4,161.

The breadth of the market was positive. Of the 2,679 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,349 stocks advanced, while 1,241 stocks declined. 89 stocks ended unchanged. Among the sectoral indices, the BSE Metal index moved up by 2.19% followed by the BSE Oil & Gas index (up 1.22%), the BSE Bankex (up 1.21%) and the BSE Power index (up 1.10%). However, the BSE CD, BSE IT and BSE Teck indexes closed in negative territory.

Among the heavyweights, Sterlite Industries gained 8.36% at Rs487.55, HDFC Bank soared 3.57% at Rs1,281.85, Tata Steel surged 3.13% at Rs485.70, Reliance Infrastructure moved up by 3.13% at Rs889.10, Grasim Industries scaled up 2.35% at Rs1,935.20, BHEL was up 2.29% at Rs1,663.30 and Bharti Airtel advanced by 2.03% at Rs779. Reliance Industries gained 1.89% at Rs2,047.60, Mahindra & Mahindra advanced by 1.75% at Rs559 and DLF moved up by 1.43% at Rs400.25. However, Wipro, Tata Motors, Infosys Technologies, Tata Consultancy Services, HDFC, NTPC, ITC and Maruti Suzuki India closed with moderate losses.

Over 96.10 lakh shares of Sesa Goa changed hands on the BSE followed by Reliance Natural Resources (87.33 lakh shares), JP Associates (75 lakh shares), Cals Refineries (63.13 lakh shares) and Austral Coke & Projects (60.67 lakh shares).